Generally, a refrigerator is a household appliance that can store food at low temperature in a storage space of inner portion thereof that is shielded by a door. To this end, the refrigerator is configured to be capable of storing stored food in an optimal state by cooling the inner portion of the storage space using cooled air generated through heat exchange with the refrigerant circulating in the refrigeration cycle.
Recently, refrigerators have become increasingly larger and multifunctional in accordance with trend of changes in dietary life and high quality of products, and refrigerators having various structures and convenience devices considering convenience of users have been released.
Particularly when the meat or fish is frozen, if a freezing point temperature range at which ice in the cell thereof is formed is passed in a short time, the destruction of the cell thereof is minimized and thus there are advantages that the meat quality is kept fresh even after thawing of the meat and delicious food can be cooked.
For this reason, there is an increasing demand of consumers for a separate storage space which can cool food at a temperature lower than the freezing chamber temperature in a short time, in addition to a refrigerating chamber or a freezing chamber.
In a case of the refrigerator having the rapid cooling function disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-Open No. 10-2013-0049496 (May 14, 2013) as the related art, the temperature of a quenching chamber can be made lower than the temperature of the freezing chamber by an exothermic surface of a thermoelectric device being attached to a freezing chamber evaporator mounted on a rear side of the freezing chamber and the endothermic surface of the thermoelectric device being installed to face the quenching chamber. According to the structure of the related art described above, since heat is transferred to the freezing chamber evaporator, there is a disadvantage in freezing chamber cooling.
In addition, there is a limit in the maximum temperature difference which can be produced by the freezing chamber evaporator and thermoelectric device and there is a disadvantage that the discharge temperature of the cooled air of the quenching chamber is unlikely to be lowered to minus 40 degrees Celsius or less.